Want to leave a digital trace of yourself on the Web using social media when you kick the bucket? As they say in the advertising world: “There’s an app for that.”
If I Die lets you to post a video message to all your Facebook friends after you shuffle off this mortal coil. Shades of Pauline Hanson’s infamous leaked message from the grave in that and more than just a little morbid.
Download the app, upload a parting message or video and nominate three Facebook friends as “trustees”. They need to confirm your demise and you’re good to go.
You have to wonder if the marketing gurus behind this thought about calling the app When I Die, just to add some inevitability to their message and promote a stronger call to action.
That’s one app that might have come in handy for relatives of the NSW hospital patients in this story. Hospital took 765 days to write a referral letter by which time the patient had died. The family of another deceased received a $70 bill after 535 days.
If you want to say goodbye posthumously, watch the Ifidie promo videos here. There’s even a Southpark version.
The Australia Day melee in Canberra is the gift that keeps on giving for PR and political junkies. Gillard media adviser Troy Hodges did what any political operative must – he took a bullet for his boss.
This isn’t suggesting the PM was a party to the chain of misinformation that provoked activists to lay siege to The Lobby restaurant. It’s just an observation that the public and media storm determined that a head had to roll. Hodges committed hari kari.
Many people would be unaware that political advisers from both sides routinely tip media to unfolding stories with the intention of reportage favouring their side. It's the way the game is played and sometimes this extends to events of public disorder.
In this case, Hodges pushed the envelope by indirectly inflaming a protest at an event where his boss was in attendance. If the protest hadn’t been so ugly nobody would have noticed and Hodges wouldn’t be looking for a job.
TV loves colour and movement and the footage of Julia Gillard being keel-hauled into her Commonwealth car will be a defining moment of her leadership.
It will be filed next to Mark Latham’s bonecrusher campaign handshake...
Between jobs? In this digitally-connected, social media-driven world, there are lots of options before you enter the revolving door of recruitment companies.
PR Weekly is spruiking this thoughtful column piece on the value of blogs as a tool to put on your best face.
While prospective employers trawling social media to gain perspective on a candidate is becoming legitimised, an article in the Wall Street Journal today says some US firms are going one step further and telling candidates to ditch their resumes and show them their Web presence.
Nervous? If you're a serial killer, it's probably a good idea to take down your Facebook page (but you probably already knew that.)
The less colourful might fret about that embarassing MySpace photo album of us chugging a yard glass at our 21st before getting behind the wheel of the porcelain bus for a technicolour yawn.
But things change so quickly in social media. How many people with a MySpace page can remember their password let alone the defunct email address they used to register?
Holy smoke! The Australian newspaper online reports The Pope wants people using the Internerds to chill out just a tad.
Pope Benedict XVI hailed the benefits of silent reflection to stop being "bombarded" by information from the internet but said social networks could be useful modes of communication.
"People today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware," the Pope said.
That quote’s scarily reminiscent of ex-US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld’s pronouncement about “known knowns” but we’ll move on.
He’s not urging people to stop typing in caps. Just to give their Blackberries a break.
Easier said than done.
There is a Papal Twitter feed but it’s not really a happening place. His Holiness has tweeted six times in eight months.
A vision of the Pope surfing the Net takes a bit of conjouring. I wonder if he’s ever stumbled across this site promoting merchandise like the Pope Soap On a Rope?
The internet activist group ‘Anonymous’ plan to take down Facebook at 12am eastern standard time on 28 January 2012. Or maybe not.
Alleged members of the group posted a You Tube Video overnight calling for people worldwide to join the ‘Greatest Internet Protest - the first official Cyber War’.
In the YouTube video they provide instructions on how to disable your local Facebook server. They claim that if enough people participate and simultaneously disable all 60,000 worldwide Facebook servers the system will collapse. They also claim you can’t get caught!
Called Operation Blackout this latest call to join their protest action or ‘hacktivism’ by members of the online community. As they profile in the You Tube clip, the group have previously hacked the CBS and Warner’s Bros websites amongst other sites.
Anonymous is a decentralised community that employs leaderless resistance which is a political resistance strategy in which independent groups and individuals, challenge an established adversary, such as a government.
In this case their protest is centered on the now-stalled US Government's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and their desire to uphold the Internet rights for people worldwide. As their You Tube video states “An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the Government of the United States”.
This latest video posting could be just a splintered subset of the community or in fact a hoax. Other members of Anonymous also tweeted from their @AnonOps Twitter feed that they would not attack Facebook. Although as their motto states: "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
Regardless of the outcome, the YouTube posting last night and other recent videos are some of the best entertainment on the internet – bring on the cyber war!
A lot's being made of a study by a West Australian academic that supposedly says Australians with Aussie flags on their cars tend to be more racist than those whose vehicles are flagless.
What it actually says is that 100 people in a Perth park on Australia Day will give a range of responses to loaded questions about immigration and multi-culturalism.
Using research as a hook for media is nothing new. It cuts both ways - PR gains a client or issue some profile while media have some news to run.
Pitching flimsy research as something substantial when it ain't just leaves a bad taste in everybody's mouth.
Here at Lighthouse we're planning to conduct some research on Australia Day into people wearing those ugly blue bucket hats.
Today's news that Julian Assange will host his own chat show reverberated around media circles today. Rove went to LA and couldn’t manage to make a fist of it so maybe this eminent Aussie expat can.
While Assange is undoubtedly high profile, there’s an old maxim in journalism that if the subject of a story is worthy of a descriptor, they shouldn’t need to tell you so. Assange’s declaration that he is “one of the world’s most recognizable revolutionary figures” probably says a lot.
Digging deeper, a search on the domain registration of Quick Roll Productions, the company licensing the chat show, opens this can of worms about the people taking care of their website.
Excuse the cynicism. I'm sure his pain was real, but this afternoon's story about K-Fed going into an Australian hospital with chest pains while filming a celebrity weight loss program for the Nine Network is going to have a predictable media life cycle.
It’s going to run like this:
Headlines in every newspaper overnight - and the Twittersphere goes into meltdown;
Breathless updates ensue from breakfast TV celebrity commentators who have little or nothing in the way of facts;
Live crosses from Mount Druitt Hospital are not out of the question and probably mandatory;
Breakfast and morning radio hosts slam the story as a publicity stunt;
Kyle Sandilands declares K Fed to be a "fat shit";
All-day promos for a night time current affairs (term used loosely) interview from the hospital bedside – on Nine of course;
Spoiler story runs on Seven because they don’t have the interview;
TV nightly news stories run on almost every channel – especially on TEN where they have to fill an hour. ABC ignores it;
The story turns into fodder for next week’s Gruen Transfer;
Mark Twain wrote: "Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning." Bearing that in mind, you have to wonder about the sense, or lack of, behind some PR campaigns.
An academic blogging for The Guardian in the UK recently laid bare an agency’s use of silly research to gain its client some media space.
Online insurance company einsurancegroup.co.uk paid for an online poll to ask people how often they lied.
Its PR company used the results to tell the world that the Welsh were the UK’s biggest liars, averaging 47 fibs a month.
You can imagine the brainstorm that came up with that gem – and how many policies the company’s now selling in Wales.
Besides the fact that what a fib is to one person is an abominable lie to another, there's the possibility that the answers respondents gave were in fact lies.
A cursory Google search shows 3600+ online stories about the campaign, most of which use the terms “dodgy science” and “cynical bid for publicity”.
That puts a “lie” to the myth that all publicity is good publicity. Any PR company worth its salt would have told the client as much and warned them about trashing their own brand.
Anyway, everyone knows the UK’s (and world’s) biggest bullshitters come from Cumbria in north-west England.
As odd as it might be to devote double-page spreads in daily newspapers to a changing of the guard in The Wiggles, it’s still the silly season in Australia. The Wiggles are the country’s highest-earning entertainers and stories like these do sell papers.
There are some great take-outs for guardians of brand reputation. Cutting through the PR-speak, they are:
Never do a media interview inadequately prepared.
There’s a link to the Today Show interview with three of The Wiggles here. They also did Sunrise.
Not to have an answer when asked how a freshly-unemployed Sam Moran felt when your media release stressed he was fine was a stumble that sent the wrong message.
So was Blue Wiggle Anthony Field saying he and Sam hadn’t spoken. It was at odds with the public position that this was an amicable departure.
Anthony agreed with an on-air statement that Sam had been a hired hand. It might have been factual but it looked insensitive and if well prepared he could have easily sidestepped it.
You can’t take it back.
If you make a mistake, fix it as soon as possible.
The Wiggles’ Facebook page has 86,000 people liking it. The announcement about Sam’s departure attracted 6000 comments in two days - many of them furious.
Anthony made an apologetic and measured clarification of the ”hired hand” issue. It has so far attracted 1800+ comments and the tone seems much more positive.
Correctly responding to social media is a judgement game. Respond too late or at all, sometimes, and you can keep an issue alive. In this instance it was the right step.
Build the story, own the narrative.
The Wiggles have great access to media. They need not to have been on the back foot.
It would have been far better to have selectively released the news that Sam Moran was leaving to pursue other opportunities and create some positive PR about the hunt to find someone to replace him.
Manage the story. Run an online campaign and then drop the bombshell that Greg was back. He could have wished Sam well and set the agenda on the group’s future.
There needed to be some distance put between Sam’s departure and Greg’s return. A joint media conference with all five Wiggles would have been a good look.
The turn of events that occurred led some to compare the situation to the coup that installed Julia Gillard for Kevin Rudd. Ouch!
While on the Wiggles, can you identify the member of the Lighthouse Communications team who appears in this clip?
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